Biking the Carriage Roads in Acadia National Park 2021

 If you want to bike on the carriage roads in Acadia this calendar year, 2021, there are a few things you need to know...First, a big chunk of the roads are closed to the public this month due to severe late spring storm damage. Some, they say, will not open back up till next year. Some are being repaired quickly, and parts of the closed carriage roads are starting to open back up. We got a visitor's map at the visitor's center in Trenton so to avoid the big crowds piling into the Acadia National Park even in the early morning hours. The guide at the visitor's center marked the closed carriage roads in pink highlighter. Eagle Lake loop carriage road, one of the most popular roads, was closed. Rats!

Sparky was discouraged at first, but then saw lots of possibilities with the remaining carriage roads. She decided to go for it and bike as much of them as she could in one day, as it is about a 25 mile drive from the RV park and Eldo would be dropping her off and coming back to pick her up later in the day. Eldo has bad knees and is unable to bike.

As we drove into the national park, we were dismayed to see trailhead after trailhead and parking lot after parking lot full to the brim and then some. People were blocking others with their cars by the way they crammed their way into the small lots, preventing some from getting out later on. It wasn't even 10:00 AM and the park was jammed with visitors. The Hull's Cove visitor's center lane was backed up from the parking lot out onto the turning lane back at the highway. 

Sparky had a map. Did she use it? Nope, not for most of the day. (Uh, oh! I'm just NOW hearing this? That means she got lost at least once, says E.) AHEM! Well, yes. But more about that later. She just decided that she would bike and bike and if a road was closed, she would take "the other way". They all loop around the park eventually, and Sparky wanted to see a few bridges so it would mean maximizing the available open routes as much as possible. The bridges of the carriage roads are some of the most amazing structures financed and overseen by John D Rockefeller, Jr. He supervised the building of 16 bridges and the carriage roads between 1919 and 1931. 

Sparky started at post 15, the Jordan Pond area. A ranger was stationed there and told her to take a left at the first post she saw, then a right at post 21, and she would see some bridges. YES!

Sparky was off....

It was a cloudy, foggy day for much of the morning. The fog obscured the views that are usually amazing, but the bridges were the highlights this time, not so much the lakes and scenery around the area. The first bridge? The Amphitheater bridge with an awesome trail underneath it. This is Sparky's favorite bridge. it is one of the longest (245 feet) in the park system, completed in 1931. 

There is a cool trail underneath this bridge. Sparky walked down underneath to check out, remembering previous visits and hikes here in beautiful Acadia. Yep, that's the trail....wet and slippery big rocks for awhile. There's a little waterfall on the other side of the bridge trail.

Back on the carriage roads....the roads are in great condition, they are built amazingly well and have withstood time, wear and tear, and weathering. The history of the engineering feats of the bridges and carriage roads is FASCINATING but way too much information to share at the moment, but you should check it out! 

BUT--they have LOTS of elevation changes, Sparky was in very low gears on her Trek bike a lot of the time, and had to get off the bike to make it up the hills some of the time. She forgot about how strenuous most of the roads are! But she felt better seeing quite a few people walking their bikes at times. When you are biking, check out the drainage ditches using the area stones to make a "natural" drainage ditch.

Another bridge.....

A smaller bridge over a stream....Sparky thinks this is the Hadlock Brook Bridge, completed in 1926.

The Duck Brook Bridge...three arches and four turret style viewing platforms at the top. Built in 1929. It's the tallest and most expensive bridge to build in the system.

The Eagle Lake Bridge...built in 1928. This is one of two bridges out of all them that you can drive over on it. It's also one of the most popular places to start riding on the carriage roads on your bike by going underneath it.

This is the Deer Brook Bridge at the left...It's the only carriage road bridge that has two arches. Sparky remembered it being brighter last time, but maybe that's because the weather was better on the last visit! It is constructed out of dark stained granite so THAT'S why it is so dark, duh! It has a fabulous dated medallion in the middle of the two arches but it's tough to see it with all the trees....

Sparky's on a roll, here. How about the Cliffside Bridge? One of the last bridges to be completed, in 1932. It hugs the cliffs of Penobscot Mountain in the park. It's about 250 feet and looks like a castle. 

By now, Sparky is getting tired. At one point, she stopped to admire the view of Cadillac Mountain and ran into a fellow traveler, a writer by the name of Angela (Andrea?) Hairston, from Massachusetts. We had a great chat about traveling and biking. Ms. Hairston has three bikes, and one of them is a winter bike with STUDDED  bike tires! Yep, you heard that right! Sparky did not know such a thing existed! Ms. Hairston was in great shape and had a great bike with all the right gear. Great chatting with you, Ms. Hairston. (I'm so sorry I didn't remember your first name for certain).

The sun started to clear the fog and there were a couple of glimpses of the possible beautiful views after all. Here's one...

One last thing Sparky saw that was pretty cool that caught her eye:

These are called ghost pipes, also known as the ghost plant or Indian pipe. It's like an herb and is a perennial. The natives used to use it as a antispasmodic medicine, and when made into a powder, to treat restlessness, pains, nervous irritability, etc. This plant doesn't have the green chlorophyll so how does it survive? By stealing nutrients from some fungi, trees and decaying plant matter around it. Cool!

It was a tired and hungry Sparky that made it back to her starting point, Jordan Pond, to meet back up with Eldy. Twenty-two miles on always changing elevations on the carriage roads, made for a great workout today...Sparky was TIRED, but thrilled to be able to ride on these beautiful roads in the park today. Hope you enjoyed the ride, too! 

We have three days left here in Ellsworth, Maine with dicey weather conditions for a hike or a bike ride the last couple of days. Rain in the forecast. Sparky wants to hike the Beehive Trail in Acadia...you know, the one with the iron rungs and the narrow cliff hanger pathway? Well, maybe...We shall see. (Yes, we shall see, says a determined-to-talk Sparky-out-of-that-hike Eldo.)

Bye for now!

Sparky Remembers How to Kayak!

Ellsworth, Maine.      High: 75   Low: 63    Site: 201

It's really been a LO-O-O-N-G time since Sparky has been kayaking. She used to have a really beautiful 14 foot kayak when she lived in Indiana and kayaked on local rivers, but that one has been long gone. While living in Florida, she went out a few times in rentals. There was a great river in the neck of the woods where she lived and a little outfitter fishing camp called Jigg's Landing on the Braden River, so that was a great way to see nature and paddle for hours. Sparky almost always saw alligators, and even ran over one one time! We've been on the road now for a year, (can you believe it?) and opportunities to kayak just haven't been on the priority list or all that available till now due to Covid restrictions and proximity to water. But when it's right in your backyard/campground, time to dust off the paddles and go!

There's a HUGE pond located at the Patten Pond Thousand Trails campground, 849 acres. It's more like a lake. The campground has kayaks and paddleboats. The kayaks are shorties--about 10 footers, and are sit-ins, or sit upons. Kayak rentals are CHEAP! Ten dollars for the first hour and 5.00 an hour for each hour after that. Sparky is IN! Bug spray? Check. Ditty bag with goodies? Check. (So THAT'S where the candy supply went, says Eldo.) Heh, heh, heh. Water? Check. Sunscreen? Yep. She's ready, all right!

And off she went. She hadn't been in the water long at all, about ten minutes and loons were calling each other all over the place. Almost sounded like they were fussing at each other. Sparky paddled like heck towards the sound, but wouldn't you know, by the time she made it to the area where she heard them, there was not a single loon to be found.

That's ok, it was a beautiful paddling day....Temperatures in the low seventies, sunny, and a nice breeze. This part of Maine is ROCKY, no surprise there. There are lots of boulders in and around the campground, so the pond is LOADED with boulders all around the border of the pond/lake. They are like icebergs--you can see the tops, but the bottoms are BIG under the water and if you get too close, you could go aground on one of them. (Ask Sparky how she knows, laughs Eldo.)

Sparky saw a gaggle of geese instead of the loons. The gander (she thinks) made a big beeline toward the kayak and squawked and fussed about her being near the group. So Sparky gave them some room, and off they went.

Sparky loves seeing the underwater life as well as life on the surface. The way the aquatic plants send curling tendrils up towards the sunlight to bring the pads to the surface, some with different colors, is so pretty. Surprisingly, no fish were seen nor turtles. They must have been hiding.

Sparky enjoys trying to take photos of the water lilies from lots of different angles, but this one was one of her favorites.

Or how about this one? It's pretty spectacular! Sometimes you just get lucky and get the right angle, the right amount of light, the right subject, the right time of day and tada!

It's interesting to see how Mother Nature colors her world. Look at the horizontal striping of these marsh plants..They were VERY red on the bottom, then yellow, then green, and quite evenly striped.

After a couple of hours, time for a paddling break and those peanut M&M's, Sparky's go-to for an energy pickup!

What a life, eh? Sparky needs to do this more often. The legs get tired from walking and bicycling, that's for sure. But tomorrow, Sparky heads to the carriage roads and the crowds of Acadia National Park to try and get some cycling in. See you on the roads of Acadia next time!

Sparky Finds a Bike Trail!

It took some research, but there IS a bike trail that picks up here in Ellsworth and is part of the Eastern Greenway. It's called the Down East Sunrise Bike Trail. It's a multi use trail connecting eastern Maine and the East Coast Greenway. Sparky has been on parts of the East Coast Greenway Trail before and found the trails to be sporadically off road and on. The Sunrise Trail sounded promising but reviews had said the trail is shared with ATV's and they cause the trail to be rough and rutty, being it's an unpaved rail corridor. It's 87 miles long and the longest off road trail on the East Coast Greenway. It's open to bicycles, walking, horses, cross country skiing, snowmobiles and ATV's, and the occasional dog sled, haha.

You can pick up the beginning of the trail (at least the Ellsworth connector) behind the Comfort Inn in Ellsworth. Sparky parked behind the LL Bean outlet store next to the Comfort Inn and took her bike up the steep quick hill to the trail. This ain't so bad.....Hmmmm..it's level, it's flat, no ruts so far.

Almost immediately, a marsh/wetlands follows with signage marking the significance of the area.

The trail is a packed sand/dirt/gravel fairly level path for about 3-4 miles. Then, grooved lanes started where ATVs have worn packed wheel paths. As long as you stay in the grooved wheel paths, it continued to be ok, with a Trek hybrid bike, it was OK. The scenery improved immensely, and Sparky started passing pond/stream/river after river and quite a few bridges.

The trail follows some railroad tracks for awhile and you pass by the Downeast Scenic Railroad station with some old train cars in the yard. 

Then the trail gets interesting... Bridges, crossings, marshes and ponds, oh, my!

Sparky was hoping to see a moose out and about. The marshlands were perfect moose habitat, and people have seen moose on this trail before.

No moose today...Just spectacular scenery for awhile....

About six miles into biking, the trail started getting rougher. The gravel became bigger, and due to lots of recent rains, the trail was a little softer in spots. The gravel pieces were bigger, and Sparky started feeling the rear tire slip and slide. Not fun! Miles 6-8 got worse with deeper ruts, and mushier soft spots and some potholes. Yuck!

Sparky started being passed by ATV's, six total during the bike ride today. They were driving responsibly and slowed down as they passed, which was courteous. Sparky has always wondered why the fascination with ATV's. They are loud and noisy, and the likelihood of seeing nature is greatly reduced. BUT--It would be fun to ride some trails, if seeing wildlife is not the goal, so we might just do that sometime!

On she went, and around about 10 miles, the trail got so soft and deeply rutted, that it was no longer fun trying to keep the bike upright and enjoy the views, so Sparky decided to try to go a little further, and made it to 12.5 miles one way. Then she turned to go back. On the way back, more fabulous scenery repeated....AND--a BIG doe was spotted around a bend trotting along the trail! 

Sparky got ready to take a photo with her phone, but two bike riders were coming the other way. She saw the doe stop abruptly in their direction, then turn and start running TOWARDS Sparky. Sparky was just trying to get the phone ready, when the doe saw her, EEK! and turned abruptly and bounded right off the trail into the woods. Too late. Rats! But it was a big beautiful doe, that's for sure, and something you don't forget! Even if you don't get a photo, it's captured in your mind.

A beautiful ride today, 25.7 miles round trip, and Sparky will probably  do it again. It's worth the rough gravely trail to see nature's beauty in Maine. It's really spectacular! Sparky DOES recommend a hybrid or mountain bike for the trail, though. Eldy's Trek Dual Sport bike is great for these types of trails. It's a hybrid with a suspension fork on the front--good for rough trails.  It has great, puncture resistant tires on it. They've been holding up really great! (Sparky is glad about that because she doesn't know how to change a bike tire on the trail!) Guess she better learn, and take an extra tube along with her.  That's it for today....see you later!

What's Ellsworth, Maine Like?

Ellsworth, Maine       High: 70   Low: 63     Site: 201

Our site--201

Wel-l-l-l....it's less crowded than Wells, Maine, where we came from. It's about 21 miles to the Acadia Visitor's Center. It's about 27 miles to Bar Harbor. It's out in the boonies outside of Ellsworth, about 10 miles out. No close shopping nearby. Not too much traffic on the highways going and coming to get to Ellsworth, but LOTS of traffic the closer you get to Bar Harbor. We like that there is far less traffic where we are. It's a quiet campground, we like that, too. It's shady in many sites, but the trees are NOT a problem. AND--there's a BIG pond (Patten Pond) for kayaking. They rent kayaks--sit ins and sit upon at this park so you can go out and paddle all you want for a very reasonable price! There's a tiny little beach for swimming. 

 A site suitable for a big rig

Do we like the campground? Yes! The staff does a great job maintaining the park. They are on top of the mowing and servicing any problems. It's a small park, about 213 sites and they are fairly close together, so sites for big rigs like us (41 feet towed with a big dually truck) are limited. Class A motorhomes, (the "big box" kind of RV that can unhook their car, THEN drive around the campground, have it a lot easier than we do.) We are about 65 feet long as we tow our RV behind us and we have to stay hooked up to do the looking around when we get to campgrounds to find a suitable spot/site unless we are given one by the campground. 

We were given a suitable site by this particular park which was really nice, because there are a LOT of boulders in the park. It's not easy driving the fifth wheel around all the boulders that mark the roads, mark the sites, and cleverly mark the electrical boxes so people won't hit them with their rigs! Plus there is a lot of turning to maneuver around the campground, so be careful if you come to the park!

The drawbacks--there aren't any great hiking trails close by. You have to drive to Acadia National Park to find a good hiking trail. There are a few more in the area that are not in the national park in the area, but it's at least 10-20 miles to get to them if you don't want to hassle with Acadia crowds. There aren't any good bicycle trails nearby. You can find ATV trails more easily than bike trails. HOWEVER, Sparky is still researching a couple of things that were mentioned in the glossy photo literature that always captures the imagination and tends to be a little exaggerated sometimes. If the statement about trails and hikes needs changing, you'll be the first to hear it right here! Sparky has been checking out Rails-to-Trails and All Trails and other sources, too. In the meantime, the first nice day, Sparky is going kayaking!

The RV sites are dirt and gravel, more dirt than gravel where we are, so when it rains, which it has been doing a LOT this late July here in Ellsworth, they are muddy and messy! Sparky wants to get a cute pair of rain boots for muddy campgrounds! We're glad our site is marked with boulders on the side so nobody will run off the road and into us

because we are right at the edge site of the park exit AND the dumping station. (It hasn't been too bad, says E.) The dumping station is where people dump their sewage holding tanks into a central location in the ground before traveling to another destination, just in case you were wondering what a dumping station is. The smell DOES carry sometimes, we've noticed, but it doesn't last long. Thank goodness!

Because we are so big and it's peak camping time, Thousand Trails Patten Pond did not have a 50 amp site available that was big enough to hold us, so we have a 30 amp site. This means we can only run ONE AC, (we have two) which is ok, because temps are in the seventies during the day, and sixties at night, BUT we have to watch which appliances run at the same time to avoid circuit overloads and tripping the breaker at the post. We have a list that we refer to occasionally, lest we forget how many amps all our "stuff" uses, but most of the time, we know how to manage our electrical load so the circuit breaker won't trip. Here's a link for RVers if they'd like to check what they have and it's electrical demand: https://www.lilacresort.com/appliance-amperage-draw-chart/

What have we done since we got here? Well, we drove to Bar Harbor one day when the weather was nice, in our big dually truck. It was just as we remembered every July that we have visited cute and quaint and beautiful BUT--super busy, heavy heavy traffic, and driving the dually thru town reminded us of the first time we came to Bar Harbor and Eldy almost had a heart attack. The GPS guided us in our first motorhome WITH THE CAR IN TOW down the main streets of Bar Harbor on July 4th. Little did Sparky know, there were TWO streets of the same name and the GPS gave her the wrong one. Eldy kept saying, "This CAN'T be right!" over and over, and Sparky kept saying, "That's what the GPS says!" We were crawling through the center of town with cars parked on both sides and it was SCARY. We were new at driving an RV with a car in tow. We thought someone would hit us or we would hit them, but we didn't. Today was almost the same. We saw a parked dually truck with the driver's mirror smashed into the side of the truck. That was it for Eldy, and back out of town we went. Parking is a nightmare in downtown Bar Harbor and even more so for a really big truck with big fenders like ours. It would be better to take a trolley next time or park just outside of town on a side street up the hill and walk back down to town. We HAVE to try lobster Mac and cheese for Eldy. There is a restaurant in Bar Harbor that has the most amazing lobster Mac and cheese ever!

We were going to stop by the visitor's center as we came into Bar Harbor, but at 10:00 in the morning, the line was already out the park and into the highway waiting to drive in. It's so crowded at Acadia, you have to have a scheduled time to go to the top of Cadillac Mountain! Hope the trails are not like that! Maybe if Sparky picks a really difficult trail, it won't be too crowded. (Maybe if Sparky picks a really difficult trail, I will be having to call the ranger because she ran into problems! says a worried Eldo.) He worries too much, me thinks.

Ellsworth is going to be a quiet, not too eventful a stay we think, and that's ok...Sparky hopes to get in a hike or two at Acadia IF we can get to the visitor's center really early when they first open. So for now...we will see you again next time. Thanks for reading along....

Last Few Days at Moody Beach and a Tesla Experience

Well, we've been in Wells, Maine for three weeks. There were good things about it and not so good things. Sparky won't harp on the narrow streets, the 8 mph traffic most days crawling on highway 1, the main road through Ogunquit, Wells, and other northern ports, nor how hard it is to park a BIG dually Ram truck in these cute, quaint little New England towns. Nope! She'd rather mention her last beach walk, a whale watch tour and a delightful day before her 71st birthday celebration with some of her family.

Sparky loved her morning walks on the beach...She did one walk at Laudholm Beach/Drake Beach one morning. This is in the Wells National Estuarine Preserve. The Wells Preserve is a research facility on marine life and is open to the public as an educational resource and has some really cool educational programs. It also butts up against the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Preserve. 

View from a boardwalk trail

As Sparky was driving in on a VERY hot day, (it was 92 that day), she was planning to take an in-the-shade walk on the forest trails on the property. The trails vary from .6 to a little over a mile. She WAS going to take a hike in the woods until she saw a summer school group of about ten kids, and FOUR of them were wearing mosquito hat head nets! The ticket booth (6.00 entry fee) to the preserve, was selling THREE kinds of mosquito spray repellent. 

Scratch the woods hike and head to the beach! She got eaten alive by mosquitoes heading down to the beach, but once there, they dissipated. There was a great children's story about Sasquatch and nature on placards attached to trees to make the little hike down to the beach interesting for kids. It's great to see nature inspired lessons for our future generations. Sparky was like a little kid, moving from one story panel to the next, reading what Sasquatch learns, while swatting the mosquitoes away.

Sparky loves all the things you can see if you look closely while walking the sandy beach. Like footprints, kinds of shoes that leave the footprints, sizes of footprints--a podiatrist would have a field day analyzing the gait, the deep impressions on one side of the foot or the other....Some people have REALLY big feet! (Sparky finds interest in the darnedest things, explains Eldo.) 

Like rocks, too! Anybody who's a rock hound would puzzle at these unique rocks....how they formed....

Laudholm Beach/Drake's Beach was a VERY different kind of beach...LOTS of rocks and boulders in one section. People were scrambling over the rocks looking for tiny little forms of marine life, they were in a class offered by the preserve to learn more about tide pool life. Cool!

Kids were having a blast playing in the sand. The mom gave permission to take a quick photo of her sons doing what all kids eventually do to their siblings or friends--bury them in the sand!

Parts of the beaches have lifeguards, and then sections of them don't. People populate both areas and don't seem to worry if there isn't a lifeguard. The water temperature at the beaches near Wells seemed to hover between 59 and 67 degrees. Refreshing! But Sparky has not gone swimming in the ocean--yet!

Sparky and Eldo decided to do a whale watch out of Kennebunkport, Maine. It was called First Chance Whale Watch. A 4.5 hour trip out on the ocean. It gets very good ratings on Trip Advisor and for the two adults it was about a hundred dollars. Unfortunately, the ocean was a little rough that day...just enough swells to make Sparky queasy. So she stayed outside the interior cabin and tried to watch the horizon. That helped!

Sparky thought these people were just sleepy from the strong ocean breezes but Eldo said most of them were using brown paper bags at one point or another. The captain cautioned us at the start of the trip not to lock yourself in the bathroom for 45 minutes like someone did on the last trip out.

Did we see any whales? Yep. One dead Minke whale. It was gross. The sharks had been feeding on it. The captain said there had been a great white shark feeding on it, but smaller tourist boats in the area observing the dead whale were keeping the sharks at bay. We didn't see any sharks at the site, that was probably a good thing! We did see a fisherman land a nice sized tuna. Sparky saw the tail and a lot of thrashing around going on, so she didn't really get a good photo.

What's nice about the tour is that if you don't see any whales, you get a voucher that doesn't expire to go out again with the same company, so we got a voucher for another day. We will do that because we will be returning to Moody Beach in two weeks for another three week stay. It was great to be out on the water on such a hot day! Had to be about twenty degrees cooler out on the ocean. Great trip, great staff on board. 

Kennebunkport is a cool little seaport. Lots of interesting shops, narrow streets, (hard to find parking) with some good restaurants. Sparky and Eldo ate at the Pilot House, a tavern right outside of the whale watch tour boat dock after getting off the boat. Eldo said it was THE BEST fish and chips EVER! Sparky LOVES these New England harbor towns.....

Our last day at Moody Beach, the day before Sparky's birthday...Sparky's brother Rich came up from Bedford, MA in his high performance Tesla, to take Sparky out for a birthday lunch. Lunch was wonderful at Hobb's Harborside, and Rich's family--his wife Lisa, daughter Sara and her finance Spencer came for a surprise visit as well. Here is Sparky with her middle brother, Rich.

Unfortunately, we forgot to get a photo of the whole family at lunch! Then, Rich took us for a ride in his Tesla, and it was AMAZING! He had to wait THREE years for this particular model Tesla car. So many cool facts about the Tesla. Something like 18 moving parts in the electric motor as opposed to over 200 parts in a conventional car motor. It goes from 0-60 in less than 3 seconds and he demonstrated that on the highway as we entered on the highway. G-Forces--yikes! He said that the car outperforms traditional expensive performance cars consistently. No maintenance needed on the car! No replacing brakes! (Regenerative braking on an electric car.) He showed us how it gets charged and the many cool features on it. Everything is controlled by the large GPS panel.

There are NO gauges, NOTHING on the dash, it's all on the panel. 

There are eight cameras on the car, giving 360 degrees of visibility up to 250 meter range. There are 12 ultrasonic sensors complement the cameras enabling detection of soft and hard objects. He demonstrated the autopilot and how safety features (you have to have one hand on the wheel at all times to let the car know you are paying attention.) If he were to make an unsafe move, the car will override him and pull it back into safe compliance. He can summon his car from a parking lot with his phone and have it drive up to him (!) as long as he has visual contact with the car. He explained how people have tried to circumvent the autopilot features and why you hear so much more about a problem with a Tesla than with conventional cars. The car industry doesn't want Musk to succeed because he's so radically different in his engineering ideas and production methods. They want him to fail, in Rich's opinion. 

charging stations along the east coast

Here's another cool feature. When he takes a trip, the software plans all his points of interest stops and charging stations with allotted time stops along the way. He told us so many interesting things and so much about the safety features of the car, we were just truly amazed and gobsmacked. (Sparky has just been waiting and waiting to use that word!). The way the car is made from molded parts and alloys, it is far more structurally sound than a conventional car. 

Elon Musk, the visionary that has made this car take off in popularity, even has a quirky sense of humor. Rich's Tesla comes with sound effects. You can assign different farting effects when a passenger gets in and sits down. You can assign goofy sound effects for your turn signals if you wanted. We laughed heartily at that! It really is a very interesting car, and has dropped down in starting price for the base models to under 40,000, approaching the average cost of a new car. Most of the features on Rich's car start with the base model as well. Well, maybe not the farting noises, haha. It is truly an amazing car and very very safe. We were very impressed!

Sparky wondered about software glitches and still does, but Rich says the software is so well designed, that if there is a problem, it's taken care of almost immediately by the company. He's extremely happy with his Tesla and boy, is he a great salesman for the company! He even has a wonderful license plate:

It stands for "Internal Combustion Engine Less". Haha...Good one, Rich!

And with that wonderful visit from family, we packed up that evening and got ready to move the next day...We will see you in Ellsworth, Maine at Patten Pond RV Park, 21 miles from Acadia National Park visitor's center.....Bye for now....